another message telling him he needed a token or tokens to operate it, but instead he got Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff about the Hoff’s bucket list. The audience was laughing it up at the Hoff’s funny answers.
Pushing the guide button on the remote produced a DirecTV menu similar to the one at home, but as with the room and the laptop, not quite the same. Although there was a wide selection of movies and sports programs, there were no network or news channels. Luke turned the set off, replaced the remote on top, and looked around.
Other than the one leading to the corridor, there were two doors. One opened on a closet. There were jeans, tee-shirts (no effort had been made to exactly copy the ones he had at home, which was sort of a relief ), a couple of button-up shirts, two pairs of sneakers, and one pair of slippers. There were no hard shoes.
The other door opened on a small, spandy-clean bathroom. There were a couple of toothbrushes, still in their cases, on the washbasin, next to a fresh tube of Crest. In the well-stocked medicine cabinet he found mouthwash, a bottle of children’s Tylenol, with just four pills inside, deodorant, roll-on Deet bugspray, Band-Aids, and several other items, some more useful than others. The only thing that might be considered even remotely dangerous was a pair of nail clippers.
He swung the medicine cabinet closed and looked at himself. His hair was crazied up, and there were dark circles (beat-off circles, Rolf would have called them) under his eyes. He looked both older and younger, which was weird. He peered at his tender right earlobe and saw one of those tiny metal circles embedded in the slightly reddened skin. He had no doubt that somewhere on B-Level—or C, or D—there was a computer tech who could now track his every movement. Was perhaps tracking him now. Lucas David Ellis, who had been planning to matriculate at MIT and Emerson, had been reduced to a blinking dot on a computer screen.
Luke returned to his room (the room, he told himself, it’s the room, not my room), looked around, and realized a dismaying thing. No books. Not a single one. That was as bad as no computer. Maybe worse. He went to the dresser and opened the drawers one by one, thinking he might at least find a Bible or a Book of Mormon, like they sometimes had in hotel rooms. He discovered only neat stacks of underwear and socks.
What did that leave? Steve Harvey interviewing David Hasselhoff? Reruns of America’s Funniest Home Videos?
No. No way.
He left the room, thinking Kalisha or one of the other kids might be around. He found Maureen Alvorson instead, trundling her Dandux laundry basket slowly down the corridor. It was heaped with folded sheets and towels. She looked more tired than ever and sounded out of breath.
“Hello, Ms. Alvorson. Can I push that for you?”
“That would be kind,” she said with a smile. “We’ve got five newbies coming in, two tonight and three tomorrow, and I’ve got to get the rooms ready. They’re down thataway.” She pointed in the opposite direction from the lounge and the playground.
He pushed the basket slowly, because she was walking slowly. “I don’t suppose you know how I could earn a token, do you, Ms. Alvorson? I need one to unlock the computer in my room.”
“Can you make a bed, if I stand by and give you instructions?”
“Sure. I make my bed at home.”
“With hospital corners?”
“Well . . . no.”
“Never mind, I’ll show you. Make five beds for me, and I’ll give you three tokes. It’s all I’ve got in my pocket. They keep me short.”
“Three would be great.”
“All right, but enough with the Miz Alvorson. You call me Maureen, or just Mo. Same as the other kids.”
“I can do that,” Luke said.
They went past the elevator annex and into the hallway beyond. It was lined with more inspirational posters. There was also an ice machine, like in a motel hallway, and it didn’t appear to take tokens. Just past it, Maureen put a hand on Luke’s arm. He stopped pushing the basket and looked at her enquiringly.
When she spoke, it was just above a whisper. “You got chipped, I see, but you didn’t get any tokens.”
“Well . . .”
“You can talk, as long as you keep your voice down. There’s half a dozen places in Front Half where their damn microphones don’t reach, dead zones, and I know